She picked out a serrated knife and turned toward me. I backed up and fell, my buttocks hitting cold tiles. Was she going to killme?
“Can you cut the bread, Ness? Make thickslices.”
Working on evening out my thudding pulse, I scrambled back up to my feet and reached out to seize the knife. The serrated blade whispered through the air and gleamed in the brightlighting.
Evelyn returned to her batter and picked up the whisk as though my reveal hadn’t happened, as though Everest’s hands hadn’t morphed intopaws.
“If I’m no longer needed, I’m going to go crash a couple more hours.” Everest pivoted toward me. “Unless you want me tostay?”
“No. Go. Thank you.” Before he left, I told him, “Read yourmessages.”
“I readthem.”
I plastered on a weak smile as he passed through the swinging door, and then I walked to the cutting board topped with three loaves ofchallah.
“Evelyn, are you—” I was about to say angry when she stopped me with a raisedpalm.
Tears pricked my swollen lids. She didn’t want to talk to me. She was horrified, and how could I blameher?
We worked in silence next to each other. While she tossed thick slabs of bacon in a cast-iron skillet, I soaked the slices of bread I’d cut in egg and milk, prepping them for the griddle Evelyn had already buttered. Not once did we look at each other. I was afraid of what I would see there, and probably, so wasshe.
While she cooked, I sunk my hands in rubber gloves and soaped up the toppling tower of bowls and cooking paraphernalia. Then I aligned the stainless-steel containers and helped Evelyn arrange the golden triangles of French toast, the fluffy pancakes, the crispy hash browns, the fried sausage, the glistening bacon, and the scrambledeggs.
As I carried the lidded metal containers into the deserted dining room, dawn fanned out over the mountains and raked through the majestic pines, tinting the rock lavender and the bristly leaves blue. Dawn had always been my favorite time of day. Perhaps because it was the quietest, or perhaps because it felt like a piece of blank paper upon which anything could bedrawn.
But not today. Today its blankness felt barren and smudged by Evelyn’ssilence.
After I slotted all the dishes into their cradles and lit the small candles that would keep them warm until the pack descended upon the dining room, I brewed coffee and tea in the pantry and filled several thermoses with the dark, steaming liquids, going through the motionsrobotically.
The swinging doorflapped.
“Do you know where I could get—” Liam’s gaze collided intomine.
I raised a thermos. “Coffee?”
Slowly, he nodded and extended the ceramic mug clutched between his longfingers.
I filled it for him. “How do you takeit?”
“What happened to yourface?”
I licked the scab on my lip. “I fell. Do you want milk?Sugar?”
His dark eyebrows pressed together. “Justmilk.”
I poured some into his mug. “More?”
He was still looking at mymouth.
“Do you want moremilk?”
He shook his head, then tugged a hand through his brown hair, mussing it up. I didn’t remember his mother in great detail—she died when I was five and he was nine—but I remembered she was a beautiful, gentle woman. Instead of looking for Heath in Liam, I looked for her, but the square, chiseled jaw, the brown eyes, the dark eyebrows, those were allHeath.
“Ready for today?” Liam asked as I set the milk down on the large woodenplatter.
“For the meeting with the elders or the paintballing?” I lined up the jugs and thermoses, then filled glass pitchers with ice and tap water and placed those on theplatter.
“Both.”
